


Needful Things

by callmeonetrack



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Infidelity, Obsession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:02:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9295466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmeonetrack/pseuds/callmeonetrack
Summary: He thinks he can walk away. He’s wrong.Set post-Rapture





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Untitled](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/255671) by Olaf47. 



When Lee is eleven, his father leaves. He tells Lee that he’s the man of the house and must protect his brother. Eager to please, Lee nods and salutes. It’s his first order.

Weeks pass and Lee watches his mother dissolve into a bottle most nights. He gets Zak up and dressed, walks him to school in the morning and picks him up in the evenings. He can’t play pyramid with his classmates after school, but he doesn’t mind. His father told him to care for Zak, and Lee is a good boy. He wouldn’t dream of questioning his father.

He learns to cook, even though he’s not really supposed to use the big gas stove by himself. He cleans every morning before school, sweeping up cigarette butts tinged with his mother’s deep pink lipstick and bottles that are always empty and sometimes broken. He starts to believe that if he is good and quiet and can settle Zak down from his occasional tantrum his mother will stop frowning so much.

But it’s hard work and sometimes he gets tired and forgets. One day, one good day, when his mother is all bright smiles and smells of lilacs rather than liquor, she takes them on a shopping trip. Lee holds on to the cart and races down the aisles, feeling freer than he ever has. Until he sees it and his forward momentum is arrested.

The toy viper is sleek and shiny and it’s loud and lights up. And he wants it. He’s not accustomed to wanting things. But the longing is fierce and piercing and sudden, and when his mother and Zak catch up to him, he clears his throat and musters his courage up and asks for it. Lee holds his breath.

Beautiful and beneficent today, his mother just smiles, her arm slipping around him and squeezing his shoulders, and she says, “Someone has a birthday coming up.” Lee remembers how to breathe and his cheeks ache from grinning for the rest of the day.

His good mood lasts longer than his mother’s, and the next morning there are bottles and butts to clean like usual, but he doesn’t mind. Zak is in a rambunctious mood, even though Lee shushes him. Oblivious and careless, his brother knocks a picture from the wall. The tinkle of glass shattering is loud on the hard floor. His mother awakens while Lee is cleaning it up, and her eyes go hard and cold when she sees the now-tattered picture of her in a delicate dress, holding his father’s arm and smiling.

Lee looks at the picture too, studies his father’s face and hears his words about being a man. He looks up at Zak who is all wide eyes, frozen in his spot near the wall. And Lee apologizes to his mother for breaking the picture.

His twelfth birthday is eight days later and Lee eagerly rips shiny wrappings off boxes, his heart full of expectation. But there is no shiny toy viper among his presents. He is disappointed, but Lee understands punishment. Maybe for solstice, he thinks. He goes to bed every night dreaming of the toy, hoping that he’ll get to see it again.

He does—two months later under shiny wrappings torn by his brother’s hand. Zak beams, clutching the toy far harder than Lee would dare, and jumps up to hug their mother. The hurt filters through Lee, swift and sharp, but it fades quickly—as childish fancies do, supplanted by graver injustices—and soon he forgets.

Lee doesn’t remember until a decade later when he sits on his couch in the early dawn one morning, his tongue still tingling with the taste of whiskey and his brother’s girlfriend, and he picks up the model viper from its perch on his coffee table. Suddenly the memory floods back into his blindsided brain, edging in among the guilt. That solstice morning is vivid in his mind’s eye, but Lee can’t recall how he eventually gained possession of the toy. He knows he never asked for it again, but somehow, some way, over the course of the years, it became his.

It gives him hope.

***

After everything—after the worlds end and the war begins, after the friendship and the fighting, after the separation and the exodus, after two marriages and two dances—the fierce longing is as powerful as ever.

It starts because he’s missed her, because he needs her, because he is transfixed by the slow curving of her cheek painted with the bruise he gave her, because he’s the only one she’ll let see her tears when Kat dies, because sometimes he can still hear her voice shouting and whispering her love for him in the darkness and it sounds true.

It ends in a moment of stubbornness, because he is stupid enough to ask for what he wants and that works out as well as it always does. Lee’s life has always been a matter of simple math—he substitutes obedience for understanding and duty for desire, companionship for passion, sustenance for comfort.

He decides it’s better to have nothing than this.

He thinks he can walk away.

He’s wrong.

***

They’re trapped and then Kara is trapped.

The cylons shoot her down and Lee sends his wife to save his mistress (and he doesn’t dare think of that as a substitution, of what would happen if only one comes back). When they return, he clings to Dee even as his eyes find Kara across the hangar deck, and Lee feels all the guilt and desperation that’s churning in his gut immolate. A slow blaze begins that intensifies as he sees Sam clutching her harder than Lee could dare. Her hands—burned and blackened—hover uselessly, adrift in the air, when they were stroking his face just a few hours ago, and her eyes—shining over Anders’ shoulder—are filled with the same desperation they held just a few hours ago. Lee is suddenly consumed by it all, the anger and desire and frustration, but he can’t be anything but the CAG now. That’s still enough though to march over, grasp her arm, and drag her off to sickbay.

They don’t talk at all as Cottle examines her and Lee stands sentry, his eyes never leaving her face, watching as it creases with pain while Ishay removes the gloves seared into her skin and cleans the raw flesh, watching as they wrap her hands in heavy white gauze and bandages, watching as she swallows the pill they give her without a single complaint for once. They don’t talk when Cottle finally shoos them out the hatch and they head back towards the bunkrooms. They don’t talk when Lee stops in the middle of C-deck and grips Kara’s elbow, turning her and backing her up against the wall and pressing his mouth hard to hers.

Kara’s surprised squeak is smothered under his lips, but Lee doesn’t pull back or ask permission. He just presses forward, hips pinning hers tightly to the bulkhead, hands holding her face as he kisses her hungrily. His thumbs tug at the corners of her mouth, opening her to him as he drags his tongue against the soft swell of her lower lip again and again. His teeth catch the private pink flesh, tugging and sucking, licking into her mouth until his pulse pounds and he’s dizzy with wanting her.

Out of breath, he finally pulls back to see Kara’s wide eyes. Her mouth is swollen and still slightly agape and his anger fades as he feels a strum of grim satisfaction. “Lee…” Her voice is scratchy and she sounds dazed, as she asks him, “What happened to ‘I can’t do this’?” He doesn’t answer, just covers her mouth with his again. For once, Lee has no desire to talk about his feelings.

Two days later, he’s crowding her into an alcove off the Memorial Wall, even as the heavy treads of a group of Marines rise and fall on the hard decking just around the corner. The day after that he finds her in the halls and pushes her through the closest hatch, not even pausing to swing it shut in his need to taste her skin. His tongue traces the line of her throat but it’s not enough, not even close, so Lee slips his hands under her tanks, peeling her bra up until his palms cup soft curves. Dimly he’s aware of the open hatch, but he figures his body will shield her from curious eyes and he strokes her skin with grasping fingers, thumbs stuttering over the hardened peaks of her nipples until she’s moaning into his mouth.

Even as he’s touching her, his mind is spinning, wondering who might stumble across the open doorway, glimpse the outline of their bodies in this well-lit room, recognize and report them. Anders is the least likely candidate, with him still bunking on a civvie ship (Lee has vowed to never offer them a married billet). Dee is more probable, yet still remote—she doesn’t come to this area of the ship often. He wonders if either of them would be surprised and decides probably not. His father on the other hand….

It’s not that he wants to get caught, exactly. Except….well… maybe he does. A small dark voice inside him trills that it would be easier that way. On the worst days, it whispers to Lee that he should have tried this when she was with Zak. Because, for as reckless as he is, Kara is, unsurprisingly, even more so. She’s slipped into the shower with him twice, the second time when the head wasn’t even empty. And on one rare night that found all four of them pulling up to the triad table at Joe’s Bar, Lee nearly bit through his lip when Kara’s hand eased into his fly under the table.

It becomes a game of one-upmanship, and he wonders, one week, if perhaps Dee and Sam do suspect something. His wife is suddenly clingy, insisting they spend quality time together, and Kara and Anders pop up at none of the spots Dee drags him off to. By the fourth day of not being able to touch or taste Kara, he feels like a stim junkie in withdrawal. He stares at her unabashedly throughout the pilots briefing, mouthing his mission notes by rote. She slumps in the front row, her face tired and her arms bare, and Lee feels his gaze drawn again and again to the heavy black ink on her left bicep, the indelible mark tangible proof that she belongs to someone else.

When the briefing ends and the pilots file out, he orders Kara to stay behind, and almost before the last one’s through the hatch, he has her up against the wall at the front of the room. His mouth latches on to her collarbone and his fingers are sliding down her stomach to hook into her waistband, popping the buttons free in quick succession. Kara is groaning quietly, hands fisted in his hair, as he sucks harder on her pale skin, sinks his teeth into creamy flesh. He can leave a mark too.

She gasps into his ear, sounding breathless in a way that thrills him, “What if someone catches us?”

Lee’s hands slip into her briefs, gripping her ass tightly, fingertips pressing hard. He hopes she’ll bruise. “Then they catch us,” he growls, biting the soft junction of her shoulder and neck. Kara murmurs something into his skin, and he guesses it must be assent, because the next thing he knows she’s sucking hard on the soft skin under his right ear, leaving her own mark. He smiles into her hair and squeezes her ass, pulling her tightly against him as he slides the clothing down her hips. He’s hard and straining already, but the part of his brain that still has blood in it recognizes that this is the line he didn’t plan to cross and it makes him pause.

Kara feels him still and lifts her head. Her eyes are luminous, sparkling with excitement as they lock on his and he loses himself in them. This isn’t how he wants it to happen. What he wants is to lay Kara down on soft sheets and cover her body in softer kisses. Lee wants to go slow and take his time and look in her eyes and know that she belongs to him and only to him.

No, this isn’t what he wants.

But it’s what he needs.

They resume moving in a flurry of action, arms and wrists knocking together as they tug at clothing, desperate to feel skin on skin. Kara pushes him back, bending him against the lectern, her hands all over him, touching him everywhere. Lee hauls her closer, hips juddering into hers, even as he rucks up her tanks and fastens his lips around a stiff nipple. She arches against him but grits out, “Frak the foreplay.”

He’s a good soldier, made to follow orders, so he releases her with a wet pop of his mouth and just skims the rest of her clothes off instead. Kara only manages to get his shirt off and his pants open, before she’s got her hand wrapped around him, stroking him with the same firm grip she uses on her throttle. His eyes nearly cross and he gasps out, “I thought you said frak the foreplay.”

But Kara’s already releasing him, sliding her arms around his neck, and his hands find her thighs, lifting her against him, even as he shifts and thrusts up as she sinks down, wet and hot and burying him deep. They both still at the sensation and her forehead tilts down to rub against his. Lee lifts a hand to smooth back her hair but he can’t stay still with her slick heat enclosing him and his hips are already rocking up in staggered, almost clumsy thrusts. But she’s rolling into him as they slip into a rhythm more quickly than should be expected with just a sole previous time together. 

His head drops, face burrowing into her cleavage as his fingertips bite into her hips. Lee paints patterns on her smooth chest with his tongue and teeth, sucks a hickey too high for her tanks to cover, even as her nails score down his back leaving tracks he knows Dee will see tomorrow. He doesn’t care—only cares about one thing right now. So he slips a hand between their bodies, fingers pressing wetly against her until she shakes in his arms, coming hard.

Even while indulging in decidedly ungentlemanly behavior, Lee is a gentleman. He only lets his own violently intense climax rip through him once she comes down, breathing his name like it’s the only one she knows. His name. No one else’s.

As they dress again afterwards, his shoulders roll against the sting of where her fingernails dug into his flesh, his eyes take in the blush-colored marks they left on each other with their mouths. They’re impossible to miss and maybe they’ll accomplish what the open hatches and hallway rendezvous haven’t. Maybe they’ll be caught. Maybe, somehow, some way, they’ll soon be set free of this trap and Kara will become his.

It gives him hope.


End file.
